


Tongue in Cheek

by cuddlebone



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Bad Matchmaking, Blind Date, Fluff with Baby Quickly Resolved Angst, Light-Hearted, M/M, Summer Vacation, it's very bad but i've wanted to write this for a while so, it's very lighthearted and sickeningly fluffy and attempting to be funny, lots of sibling shenanigans, self-indulgence beyond galore on this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 15:40:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19930459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cuddlebone/pseuds/cuddlebone
Summary: Soonyoung and Wonwoo have harbored feelings for each other since middle school. Soonyoung's little brother and Wonwoo's older sister have known about this since the dawn of time, or so it feels. There comes a breaking point, a point where it's painful to watch from the sidelines, and that's when they take matters into their own slippery hands.





	Tongue in Cheek

**Author's Note:**

> hello, long time no see! i always say this don't i
> 
> no trigger warnings because this fic is just cute and sweet and fluffy and family friendly from beginning to end. shocking, i know, i know
> 
> it features art from the absolutely wonderful artist i was paired up with for this fic fest, amber!!! (go check out their twitter @moonysorrows for more of their pieces!!!) it was so fun to work with them and to see parts of my fic visualized so beautifully. <3 <3

It’s been years. No one appreciates being told of a reunion, with people you haven’t seen since you were too young to sit in a passenger’s seat or ride a rollercoaster, on such short notice.

The plaza overlooks distant city lights, flickering in and out of focus. Jasmine and gardenia are woven into the pavilion’s structure, sweetening the balmy wind, and beneath it, a table is set with candles, bouquets, and select wine from the deepest corners of the cellars. Snails, crabs, frogs, ribs, innards, arranged sparsely and desirably, masked with sauces and spice.

The parents have taken their seats, all thousand-dollar smiles and amiable small-talk. Wonwoo is waiting around the corner, behind a dense bonsai, trying to find the opportune moment to step out. He knows Soonyoung is out there, and he knows it’s inevitable that they face each other, and that there’s no way they won’t catch each other’s eyes, and that hesitating is doing nothing but heightening the tension. He runs his hands through his hair, slicked out of his face, and hesitates anyway.

Soonyoung is standing behind the fountain, busying himself with his cufflinks. He closes his eyes, telling himself it was bound to happen eventually, and that Wonwoo’s definitely grown up as much as he has since they were last together. That he’s overcomplicating a piece of cake.

“You used to do this when you were little, when you were shy,” Seulgi says. “Hide behind me, or a tree, or a pillar.”

“Old habits die hard,” Wonwoo responds through gritted teeth.

“I’d think they’d die easy, when you’ve been doing book tours and press interviews all year,” Seulgi teases gently. “Just go, Wonwoo. It’s _Soonyoung_ , not a stranger.”

Soonyoung stiffens when he hears his parents greeting Wonwoo. The voice drifting over is deep and velvety, but it can’t belong to him. Could it be? Has it really been that long? “Can’t you go out before me?” Soonyoung’s own lilts up in desperation.

“To soften your fall?” Hyunjoon scoffs. “No way.”

Hyunjoon tries to push Soonyoung out of his hiding place and into the spotlight, but they’ve done this too many times, and Soonyoung’s too good at resisting his attempts. It takes Hyunjoon nearly stumbling into a waiter laden with a silver platter for them to step away from each other and reassess themselves.

“We go together, then,” Soonyoung huffs, resigned. “Come on, mom won’t like it if we take much longer.”

“It _is_ very poor etiquette to keep your guests waiting and let the food go cold.” Hyunjoon smiles darkly, and stretches his hand out towards the table. “After you.”

Wonwoo tries to avoid looking, tries to focus on how the light bounces off the flutes of wine and the cutlery. How Seulgi has already picked apart half her plate and downed most of her wine. When he catches Soonyoung out of the corner of his eye, however, it’s irresistible. It’s beyond him. His eyes meet Soonyoung’s for no more than a split-second, but that’s all it takes to feel blinded, Soonyoung a lightning-strike and Wonwoo a quiet midnight.

Soonyoung’s fork clatters off the edge of the table, bouncing across the tiles. Hyunjoon follows suit, very intentionally rumpling the tablecloth and dropping his knife to the ground. Under the table, he leans in and whispers, voice wavering in his effort to funnel the words into Soonyoung’s ears only. “You still like him. I knew it!” Soonyoung gives him a warning glance, sliding his hand across his neck in a slicing motion.

Across the table, Seulgi leans into Wonwoo’s shoulder at nearly the same time, and says nearly the same thing, but with the tact and sweetness of an older sibling and a wiser observer. No matter how she packages and sugar-coats it, however, Wonwoo still grimaces sourly and shushes her.

When dessert is being served, when Wonwoo’s mother begins to speak, Soonyoung feels like he’s begun to drown. It’s a nightmare, worst-possible-case scenario. This dinner has barely ended, and it feels like he’s gotten enough of Wonwoo for a lifetime, and then some to spare. “We feel it was a mistake to separate you kids from each other, after practically raising you together all those years. We want to bring our families closer again, and we gathered tonight to ask how you feel about a few weeks in Europe together, to kick off the summer?”

Wonwoo goes blank, inside and out, faltering mid-chew. Soonyoung drops his fork again.

Seulgi coughs. Hyunjoon sighs.

There comes a point where Wonwoo and Soonyoung each excuse themselves from the table. This won’t be the last of each other they’ll be seeing, so it’s futile to part ways so soon, so they end up pulled towards each other, one following the other’s footsteps, as naturally as all those years ago. Wonwoo sets his untouched glass of wine on the balcony railing overlooking the plaza below, and Soonyoung leans against it.

“I saw your name at the book-store last week. Making waves in the publishing industry.”

Wonwoo’s lips twist from scowl to smile. “I saw your photographs in the headlines last month. They were beautiful.”

Their conversation is disjointed, one-sided, each other’s words acknowledged but not responded to directly. “What happened to your glasses?”

“I still wear them, just not tonight. What happened to your braces?”

“Outgrew them. Is your favourite food still jellied eel?” The mention of jellied eel was enough to put Wonwoo off of dinner, back then; Soonyoung wants to see if he can still get a rise out of him. After all this time.

“Naturally,” Wonwoo nods, refusing to engage. _He really has grown up,_ Soonyoung thinks, feeling so betrayed for a moment that he forgets that time has done the same to him. “Do you still cry when movies end with happily ever afters, no matter how predictable?”

Soonyoung bristles inside, but forces the same affected aloofness as Wonwoo, mirroring his face. “I’m afraid so. I have a glass heart.”

“I’d better not break it, then,” his lip curls, voice dripping with sarcasm. He’s not hurt anymore, and he’s almost forgiven him, because they were too young and too capricious to understand the weight of what they were doing, but remnants remain. His words unearth the same memory that they’d both tried to bury; a disastrous last-minute confession when Wonwoo learned that his family was moving away, teary-eyed and vulnerable, desperate for closure and release. And Soonyoung was so scared of the idea of requited love that he ignored him, rejected him softly, and pretended the words had never been said the next day.

“You’re so tall now!” Seulgi coos, standing on her tip-toes to ruffle Hyunjoon’s hair. He reddens and ducks away, but he can’t say much. She remembers singing nursery rhymes in his ear and pushing his swing, putting band-aids on his sandbox wounds and trying to coax spoonfuls of peas past his lips.

Hyunjoon puts his hands in his silk-lined pockets and purses his lips into a little smile. “How have you been, Seulgi?”

“So you didn’t forget my name!” She exclaims again, a hand over her heart, her eyes glistening to match the pearls hanging from her ears. “And drop the formalities, please.”

“Still as bad an influence as ever,” Hyunjoon tuts, joking back at her. “Are you wearing Valentino?”

Seulgi looks down at her dress, as though only just realizing what she’s wearing. It’s crushed velvet, ruffled at the shoulders, with a scalloped neckline and diaphanous, light-catching embroidery down the sides. “I’m not sure, but I’ll take your word for it. All I know is that it’s the most uncomfortable thing I’ve worn in ages.”

“Soonyoung and I were just talking about how we can’t wait to be out of these suits,” Hyunjoon agrees, nodding up to Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s silhouettes, farther apart than they were before. “He’s probably forgotten all about that now, though.”

“Tell me about it. Wonwoo forgot how to act at the thought of seeing him again,” Seulgi mumbles out of the corner of her mouth, following Hyunjoon’s gaze up to the balcony. “It’s pathetic.”

“Soonyoung tried to hide in the restroom all evening rather than face him. _They’re_ pathetic.”

Seulgi nudges him with her elbow, still fixated on the way Wonwoo keeps running his hands through his hair nervously and looking away from Soonyoung to gather composure; he may seem inconspicuous and nonchalant to the untrained eye, but she can read him like a book. “So, are we going to do anything about it?”

Speeding up the process. Taking matters into their own hands. “We can try, but how cooperative will Soonyoung and Wonwoo be, knowing them?”

“Still my devil’s advocate, I see.” Seulgi smirks. “We’ll do our best, despite them.”

Aboard the flight, Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s heads are in the clouds, trying hard to avoid each other, even though they were made to sit along the same aisle when Hyunjoon abruptly “demanded” a window seat. Now Hyunjoon sinks into his seat every time Soonyoung glowers at him, but then he turns to Seulgi and snickers when, two hours in, Soonyoung leans into Wonwoo and strikes up conversation.

It’s because he notices the way Wonwoo fidgets and clutches the seatbelt buckle, white-knuckled. It’s almost tender, the words coming out subconsciously, forgetting the present tension between them. “Putting on some music or a book used to help.”

Wonwoo looks at him, eyes wide. He’d thought he’d been subtle and quiet, but now he feels betrayed by his own minute ways of expression, betrayed by the way he’d forgotten that Soonyoung had known him for so long that he could see right through the stoic face, just as Seulgi can. “I’m not afraid of heights anymore.”

“Outgrown that, too?” He’s almost teasing him. “Remember when we used to play puzzles to pass the time when we were going on family vacations?”

Wonwoo remembers. _I remember you holding my hand whenever there was turbulence, as tender back then as you seem now._ “The only thing I haven’t outgrown is my inability to move on without apology. Or acknowledgement, at least.”

Soonyoung feels turbulent, like the plane has lurched, but it’s just him in his seat. Wonwoo’s words are once again, like the night at the plaza, a harsh, bitter sting. A reminder that it’s not too late to change course, if only he doesn’t run away this time.

“Wedding bells are ringing,” Hyunjoon sing-songs as he watches them. He thinks so, anyway.

“Soonyoung’s going to kill you,” Seulgi responds in the same tone.

“I’ve done worse.” Hyunjoon waves a hand in Soonyoung’s direction, dismissive. Soonyoung catches this out of the corner of his eye, tilting his head to one side. Hyunjoon draws a heart in the air and points at Wonwoo. Soonyoung looks like he’s had quite enough.

Five hours in, Soonyoung falls asleep with his headset on. Seulgi and Hyunjoon are huddled over what looks like blueprints from afar. A devised plan, upon closer look. They’re more like children on a playground than esteemed heirs; whispering over each other, fighting over the pen, scratching out each other’s ideas, so immersed that they don’t notice Wonwoo abandoning the flight attendant he’d been chatting with to peer over at them.

“What are you doing?”

Hyunjoon throws his arms over the papers, nearly knocking them astray in his attempt to cover them up hastily. “Helping him with his homework,” Seulgi says, eyeing him.

“It’s summer vacation.” Wonwoo’s response is monotonous, soulless, dead-eyed. He swishes the ice in the bottom of his cup. “That’s the whole point of this trip.” His eyes narrow. “But sure.”

“Remind me again why we’re so invested in them,” Hyunjoon mumbles as they watch Wonwoo’s figure recede down the aisle.

“Because it’s painful to watch as a bystander. And it’s what any good sibling would do.” Hyunjoon nods, thoroughly convinced. He takes Seulgi’s word easily, because she’s older, and therefore she must be wiser.

“Soonyoung’s oblivious to Wonwoo’s attempts, and Wonwoo’s in denial when Soonyoung’s so obvious. I hate them.” Hyunjoon makes a show of throwing his spaghetti-wrapped fork down into his plate, causing it to clatter and splatter Bolognese all over the crisp white tablecloth.

Seulgi peers over the gilded menu she’s holding upside-down. Three tables removed from them, Wonwoo gazes at Soonyoung, and Soonyoung gazes out of the open window, at the tendrils of grape and pomegranate against the dazzling deep-blue of the distant sea. “Give them time. Let the relationship grow organically.”

Hyunjoon, a beginner at love fancying himself an expert, adjusts his sunglasses and lets Seulgi’s words float in one ear and out the other. He fashions a paper and pen seemingly out of thin air, scribbling furiously. Then he raises his hand for a waiter. He motions with his fingers for the waiter to lean closer, and whispers something as he points to Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s table.

Little does he know that it’s not as simple as the two of them being bad at love. Little does he know that Soonyoung’s been gathering courage to do things right this time, because he doesn’t know how many more chances Wonwoo will give him if this one is ruined, too.

Little does Hyunjoon know that a forged confession letter delivered with Wonwoo’s plate of cannoli is far from helpful- or discreet, for that matter.

Wonwoo opens the letter, and meets Soonyoung’s eyes without giving it a second glance.

Soonyoung is put out by the letter, at first, wondering what kind of admirers Wonwoo has amassed over the years. Then he watches the expression drain from Wonwoo’s face as he opens it, and he feels insatiably curious. He dabs a napkin at the corners of his red-stained lips and nods at it. “Who’s it from?”

“You, apparently.” Soonyoung chokes. Wonwoo hands it over. “See for yourself.”

“” _Aside from being sexy, what do you do for a living”?_ Really, Hyunjoon?”

He scowls. “It seemed like the kind of thing you’d say.”

They’re standing outside of the restaurant, Soonyoung’s hand still cutting into Hyunjoon’s arm, a steely, unrelenting grip leftover from when he’d forced him off the table and out to talk- after sitting there staring at the piece of paper, blanching and reddening and feeling sorry for himself, and for Wonwoo most of all. “I don’t even write in cursive!”

“Wonwoo wouldn’t notice that.”

“Wonwoo isn’t stupid.”

“Until he’s around you.” It’s a backhanded compliment, but Soonyoung refuses to let himself think about what it means for long.

Soonyoung lets go of his arm. Hyunjoon shrinks away, out of Soonyoung’s shadow, glad to be released. “Listen, I don’t know what you and Seulgi think you’re going to achieve through doing this, but it’s tearing us apart more than it’s bringing us together.”

“We just want to see you two happy,” Hyunjoon doesn’t even need to bat his eyes and affect his words with innocence, because it’s the exasperating truth, and he’s not above admitting it.

Soonyoung hails a taxi, giving the driver directions to the hotel they’re staying at. He opens the door, and just before he makes Hyunjoon climb inside and closes it behind him, he adds, “I appreciate the sentiment, but I’d be happiest if you stayed out of my hair.”

JUNE 14TH

THE EVE OF SOONYOUNG’S BIRTHDAY

ABOARD A GONDOLA, ALONG THE BANKS

VENICE, ITALY

When, in Hyunjoon’s life, has he ever listened? Nonetheless when it’s Soonyoung’s words, when it’s so deliciously satisfying to go against them? When he knows Soonyoung is wrong about having the cat- in this instance, Wonwoo- in the bag?

His knees are crammed tightly together to give Seulgi room for comfort, cramped together on the crushed-velvet bench of a lovers’ gondola. They’re sitting as far apart from each other as possible, which still isn’t much, further evidenced by the way the gondolier keeps looking between them and raising his eyebrows.

“Any last minute confessions?” Seulgi jokes through gritted teeth, elbowing him.

“I’d sooner capsize this gondola,” Hyunjoon bites back, peering down at the murky green water.

“Might as well, because I think we’ve lost them in the crowd again,” Seulgi responds. Their gondola bobs and floats at its own leisurely pace, ideal for the average tourist taking in the lights reflected on the water, the archaic buildings looming in the dark, but unfortunate for anyone trying to follow the whereabouts of two night-market-goers on foot.

Soonyoung and Wonwoo weave in and out of sight, as though trying to shake them off their tracks. They’ve been shopping together, falling in line with the way they used to be, Wonwoo holding up two button-ups with clashing patterns and making Soonyoung pick between them, and Soonyoung trying his broken Italian on Wonwoo before turning to the clerk, making him struggle not to laugh. It’s always been like this, Soonyoung willing to overexert himself if it means anything to Wonwoo, willing to go to endless lengths if it means that in their wake something as simple as a smile will bloom on Wonwoo’s face.

It’s all fun and games until it peters out slowly, the laughter leaving the shadow of an ache on their cheeks when it fades away and they sober up. The bustling night-market begins to empty, the clocks in every store echoing each other as they tick closer to midnight.

“I never thought this was how we’d end up,” Wonwoo’s saying as he looks out at the water, at the few remaining gondolas lazily cutting their way through the rivulets and alleyways and into the main canal. “This painfully awkward unbroken silence that eats away at us every time we joke and laugh.”

He sounds like the voice in his head, like a narrator telling his own story.

“I’m sorry,” Soonyoung blurts out before he’s even formulated the rest of his words. Better late and messy than never. Wonwoo looks at him imploringly, but he doesn’t ask what the sudden blanket apology is for, because he knows it’s leftover from years ago, held inside until the time was right. “I didn’t think. Of you, or your feelings. I only thought of mine.”

Wonwoo stays quiet. He lets Soonyoung’s words seep, sink deep until they sprout roots and can’t be unearthed. They’re surrounded by sound, chattering, clattering, noises, voices, but all they can hear are their own unspoken words. Years’ worth of them.

“Why didn’t you get the blue shirt?” Wonwoo interrupts abruptly, plucking at the sleeve of the asymmetrical, leopard-printed thing hanging out of Soonyoung’s shopping bag.

“You said you liked this one better,” Soonyoung mutters, remembering the way he’d tried both on earlier, and Wonwoo had pulled the dressing room curtain aside to give his mouthy opinions.

“I said it _suited_ you better. I was being objective.”

A sigh, an uncomfortable shrug, hands pressed to his ears and neck to try and dispel the warmth before it becomes physically apparent. “Same thing.” As if subjectivity isn’t tangled into a statement like _this one suits you better,_ because what if it only suits him better in Wonwoo’s beholding eyes? Then again, that’s all Soonyoung needs, for Wonwoo to like it, the rest of the world can wrinkle their noses and turn away.

Now he smiles, sideways, a cat’s grin when it uncovers the mouse caught beneath its paw. “Since when do you value my opinion so much?”

  
Good thing Soonyoung always has a few answers up his sleeve. “Since when do birds fly? Since when do fish swim?”

“Slow down, I’m supposed to be the eloquent one here,” Wonwoo says, only a little sarcastic- his cat-smile is only widening. “Nice analogies. I don’t know how much sense they make, from a literary point of view, but I like them anyway.”

Soonyoung hates how much he preens under Wonwoo’s praise, hates how he lets Wonwoo get away with being this insolent and pretentious. Hates how attractive he finds Wonwoo’s mouthfuls, how it’s making him stare at his mouth now, at his curled cat-smile, cat-lips, cat-teeth-

The clock struck midnight a while ago, but they were too wrapped in their own time to notice. Wonwoo used to make it a competitive habit to make sure he was always the first person who wished Soonyoung a happy birthday; he’d send the first text message, give the first present, sing the first rendition of the tired old candlelit tune, right into Soonyoung’s ear. Soonyoung’s life hasn’t been the same without Wonwoo’s presence, but days like birthdays are when he noticed the absence most painfully.

Now he leans in, for the first time in years, and kisses Soonyoung on the cheek. It’s chaste, le chat. “Happy birthday,” his cat-lips mouth, and Soonyoung beams, trying to stop himself from reaching up and touching the spot on his cheek.

JUNE 22nd

A LAKE BENEATH THE SOUTHERN ALPS

NORTHERN FRANCE

The motorboat whirs through open water, stirring up waves and ripples where there were none before. The sun is pleasant on the nape of Wonwoo’s neck, warm when it bounces across Soonyoung’s cheeks, prickling against their eyes, but still they squint through it so they can gaze at each other. Christmas trees without the ornaments line the steep cliffs that give way to pebble beaches on the shores of the lake, but Soonyoung’s a photographer, and he knows a background never catches the eye as much as a good forefront does. And he knows he can’t take his eyes off of Wonwoo.

Zoom out. Nestled into the cliffs, somewhere between the melting snow and the gushing riverbeds, a tartan blanket is spread over a flat plateau of rocks, weighed against the wind by a wicker picnic basket. Binoculars glint in the high summer sun, snatched out of the boy’s hand, now covering half the girl’s face as she tries to steal a closer look at the lovers on the boat cutting through the sparkling blue.

“He likes his big shoulders and fancy spectacles,” Hyunjoon concludes, closely examining the piece of prosciutto he’s skewered with his toothpick. “He’s _overwhelmed_ by them.”

Seulgi puts the binoculars down in her lap. “How do you know that?”

“All the data I’ve accumulated in here,” he taps his temples. “Also page 7 of his diary.”

“He keeps a diary?” Hyunjoon nods at that, and then Seulgi gasps and pinches his arm a second too late. “You _read_ his diary?”

Hyunjoon hisses and rubs his arm. “What, like you’ve never read Wonwoo’s? You’re no saint.”

“Wonwoo’s more the vague, melodramatic poetry type.” Seulgi crosses her arms, uncrosses them, then crosses them again, wound-up by Hyunjoon’s ways. “I still think you should be a little nicer to him. I’ve never seen him be anything but loving to you.”

He shrugs uncomfortably, knowing her words to be true. “Anyway, look, he’s trying to flirt,” Hyunjoon distracts, pointing down at Soonyoung, running his hands down the length of Wonwoo’s arm as they lean against the boat railing and talk, the easing tension written all over the way their bodies lean into each other now.

“I heard you spent a month in a cottage somewhere around here to write your book,” is what Soonyoung’s saying, half-shouting to make himself heard over the churning of the propellers through the water.

“It was great for getting the words out, great ambience and nature, but kind of lonely,” Wonwoo answers.

Soonyoung perks up, nodding. “It seems like the kind of place that needs good company. But I guess that would distract you from writing.”

Wonwoo shakes his head. “It was a cottage for two, and someone else was all I was missing.” He and Soonyoung look away from each other, pointedly, abashedly, stubbornly, though they both know exactly what the other is tiptoeing around. It’s not hard, when they grew up together, when it seems as though the same soul was halved and put into each of their bodies. Soonyoung thinks Wonwoo’s holding a grudge, and he’s about to walk away and let him choose to fester rather than move on, until Wonwoo adds something that can only be perceived as _flirting._ The disastrous, romantically inept Wonwoo from their youth has long since been stuffed into a burlap sack and dumped in a river. “You could have been my muse.”

Soonyoung supposes there is a grudge being held after all, but it’s sweet as much as it is bitter. Wonwoo isn’t blaming Soonyoung for rejecting him anymore, isn’t holding onto old heartbreak, he’s just reminding Soonyoung of what could have been, had he not been so flighty. “There’s a future ahead of you to do it over.”

“But Seulgi says she missed me a lot when I was gone.”

  
  
“That makes one of our siblings. Hyunjoon would love nothing more than to see me off indefinitely,” Soonyoung laughs, and so does Wonwoo, a light little wrinkle of the nose, a hand over his sharp lips.

“I think he values you more than you think,” Wonwoo responds. “Though I get the feeling Seulgi might become more like Hyunjoon about it, depending on whether she knows who’s accompanying me.” The sun’s heat no longer feels so pleasant on Soonyoung’s cheeks.

Up on the plateau, Seulgi swats a bumblebee away and turns to Hyunjoon. “Do you ever get the feeling they know we’re here, and they know what we’re doing, but they’re choosing to ignore us?”

Soonyoung and Wonwoo are actors in a theatre, sock-puppets in a play, marionette dolls on Seulgi and Hyunjoon’s strings, if you will, but they refuse to break the fourth wall. Hyunjoon answers without breaking his gaze from the binoculars. “Oh, they’re onto us. And we don’t mind, so long as they end up together, right?”

JULY 9TH

A GOLF CART, A QUIET BEACH

MONTE-CARLO, MONACO

In the time it takes Seulgi to tie her hair into a red bandana and amble from the glossy-gold elevator to the revolving doors, beyond the glass of which a sprawling white-sand, blue-sky, bluer-water view stretches, to rub her eyes and yawn as she steps out into the blinding morning light, Hyunjoon has found a new way to follow Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s footsteps without leaving any tracks of their own.

The golf cart barely misses the curb when it comes to a screeching halt, sending a breeze through the tall fronds of white Ravenna grass and bougainvillea. Hyunjoon squints, shades his eyes with his hand when he looks over to greet her. “I love the bandana.”

“Thank you!” Seulgi says, reaching up to adjust it again. She walks around the golf-cart, as though inspecting it- for damage, chipped paint or scrapes from crashing into potted plants or tree trunks on the way here, maybe. “Where’d you get this?” _Who let you have the keys, unsupervised?_

Hyunjoon shrugs, curling his lip. “I showed them my permit, and they let me have one.” He taps the sun-warmed leather passenger’s seat next to him. “Hop on. Soonyoung and Wonwoo are already on the other side of the resort.”

The glint in Seulgi’s eyes is playful, but she refuses to get on, crossing her arms. “It’s not a bumper car, Hyunjoon. And I don’t even know much I’d trust you driving that.”

He doesn’t argue with Seulgi for long, because he’s too preoccupied by the chase at hand, the pursuit of his older brother’s developing romance. But he sulks first, complains about not being taken seriously, and how the nose-bleed at the amusement park was _one time,_ when he was _nine,_ years and years ago!

“Come on, I don’t even know how they let you get this far.” Seulgi digs her heels in. “What would your mom say if she knew I let you? I want to live to see Paris next week.”

“I guess I don’t trust my driving either, when you put it that way,” Hyunjoon slides into the passenger’s seat, sufficiently scolded.

With Seulgi behind the wheel, it takes them a great deal longer, both because she drives at legal, adult speeds and because they lose their way several times, looping around the resort before eventually finding the arrow pointing to the private beach.

The time between is ample enough for plenty of things to happen, with no additional eyes to bear witness. Soonyoung and Wonwoo relish in the moments without, and play up their interactions when they know Seulgi and Hyunjoon are the rustling in the bushes behind them.

“They want us together so badly,” Wonwoo comments when the topic comes up, sandals in one hand, bare feet in the damp, clumping sand.

“And they say we’re the pathetic ones,” Soonyoung comments, skirting around the way Wonwoo brought up the idea of them- two, together, conjoined- so casually. He fingers a pale pink shell out of the sand and cleans it in a shallow, lapping wave. “They’re too invested, if you ask me.”

“Seulgi says it’s what any good sibling would do.” Wonwoo then asks to see the seashell, admiring it in his palm. “I think it’s sweet that they want to see us happy.”

“Would we be happy together?” Soonyoung breathes, hoping his words weren’t drowned out by the waves or the wind, because he doesn’t have it in him to say them again, especially not any louder. “Would you be happy with me?”

Wonwoo looks at him with a strange sort of wonder, as though marveling at just how dense and stuck-in-the-dark (even though the light-switch is inches from his nose) Soonyoung can be about things like this. “Would I? Why do you think I couldn’t move on all these years we were apart, Soonyoung? If I was happier anywhere else, with anyone else, I’d like to think I’d be off chasing that right now.”

Soonyoung wishes the waves and the wind would stop now, so he could be sure he’d heard Wonwoo clearly. But he read his lips the whole time, and he knows by the look on his face. He feels like he’s the shore, and Wonwoo and the waves are crashing onto him without mercy.

“In some ways, you really haven’t grown up at all,” Wonwoo goes on to add. “Your face, it’s the same as the one in my memory, the moment when I confessed to you and everything went wrong.”

Soonyoung tries to cover it with his hands, but the memory of how he’d reacted, so clueless, so dense as to seem cruel, is not only making him want to sink into the sand, but reminding him of how important it is to do it right this time. Do it right, do it right, those words are the only thing running through his mind these days, it seems. “It’s just taking me a minute,” he reassures softly.

Wonwoo laughs. “It’s okay. You left me hanging for years last time, and then it took you a few more to own up to it and apologize. I’ve gotten good at waiting.”

It’s mean, and the constant reminder, like a knife tucked up Wonwoo’s sleeve, is far from helpful. Soonyoung scowls, but he’s right. “So you still want to be with me, even after all of that?”

Wonwoo looks like he wants nothing more than to grab his face and kiss it. “God, you’re slow,” he complains again, but he acts on his feelings. He takes Soonyoung, who feels quite taken already, and overwhelms him even further by pressing his lips to his for just long enough to seal the deal. No backing out now.

All of this happens without anyone else knowing. By the time Seulgi and Hyunjoon arrive, they’ve kissed a dozen and a handful more times, and they’re walking where the water foams and swirls around their ankles. Inconspicuous, save for the way Soonyoung keeps giggling out of nowhere, and Wonwoo keeps kicking his shin gently, a half-hearted way of telling him to pull himself together.

Hyunjoon is spreading his beach towel on the sand, folding his shirt and tucking it beneath the yellow-striped umbrella, saying, “You know, I think it’s about time we gave up. They’re hopeless.”

  
“Not so fast,” Seulgi cuts him off, turning him around manually. Soonyoung and Wonwoo have reached the outcrop of rocks on the opposite end of the same beach, nothing but pinpricks in the distance with their backs turned to them. But even from this far away, Soonyoung’s arm is settled comfortably on Wonwoo’s lower back, hand on his waist, and his other hand is entwined in Wonwoo’s. In plain sight.

JULY 16TH

THE EVE OF WONWOO’S BIRTHDAY

IN THE SHADOW OF THE EIFFEL TOWER

PARIS, FRANCE

The final destination. A final attempt in Paris, the city of love, or lights, or something. Two blindfolds, two Hermes scarves Hyunjoon tried to borrow nimble-fingered from his mother’s suitcase, before Seulgi stopped him and made him return them, offering up two of her own instead. A dinner reservation for two beneath the tower itself, made over a hotel telephone weeks in advance, by Hyunjoon pretending to be Soonyoung. Ideally, it’ll stretch into midnight, and the tower will begin to sparkle, and they’ll twirl and kiss beneath it. That’s what Seulgi’s brochure advertises, anyway, as though trying to will it into being.

Seulgi and Hyunjoon split up, each with the same goal at hand. Seulgi knocks on Wonwoo’s room door, winking at Hyunjoon as he enters Soonyoung’s and shuts it behind him.

“So I heard you have a date in… an hour,” he starts, checking his wrist-watch as though confirming it.

“This would be the first I’ve heard of it,” Soonyoung responds, sounding dry as Wonwoo, rolling over on his rumpled hotel bed, propped up on his elbows.

“That’s kind of the idea.” Hyunjoon stretches the scarf out towards Soonyoung, smiling agreeably for maximal coercion. “Now all I need is your cooperation.”

“Why are you so invested in getting us together?” Soonyoung asks, reiterating his and Wonwoo’s thoughts. He rolls over again, so he’s sprawled horizontally across the bed, head hanging off the edge of the mattress, staring upside-down at Hyunjoon.

  
Hyunjoon shifts his weight onto one leg. “Well, it’s kind of fun, I’ll admit, but I’m mostly trying to get you out of the house.”

  
Soonyoung scoffs, kicking at the bedsheets. “I thought you said it was because you wanted to see me happy. Wonwoo thinks so, too, deep,” here he pokes the left side of Hyunjoon’s chest with his index finger, “deep down.”

  
Wonwoo’s right, it’s true, but Hyunjoon’s not about to let either of them know. Not in this lifetime. “If thinking so helps you sleep at night, and keeps the conversations going with Wonwoo, then sure.”

“You’re a sweetheart,” Soonyoung coos, pleased, and Hyunjoon thinks he’s got him, until he says, “But this blind date isn’t necessary. I have it under control.”

Hyunjoon bristles. “Well, hurry up with it already! Time’s ticking, we’ll be back home soon, and what better place to confess than the city-“

  
“Don’t,” Soonyoung interrupts.

Hyunjoon smiles into his words. “-of _love_.”

“I don’t even like him,” Soonyoung tries, but he falters before he can get half the words out. It’s a terrible attempt at a lie- even the fly on the grapes in the fruit basket on the gilded vanity knows better than to believe it.

  
Hyunjoon’s eyes roll into his skull. He sits on the foot of the bed, his knee in Soonyoung’s face. “Uh-huh, that might work on other people, but I _am_ your brother, and I frankly find it disrespectful that you’d even try it on me.”

Soonyoung tickles Hyunjoon’s knee, laughing at him when he recoils. He rises off the bed and looks at himself in the mirror, assessing just how wrinkled and ruined his day-clothes are. He laughs again when he meets Hyunjoon’s eyes in the reflection, at the ridiculousness of it all. “Why the blindfold when you and I both know it’ll be Wonwoo sitting on the other end of the dinner table?”

Hyunjoon hesitates; Soonyoung raises a valid point. But the blindfold is customary, and he enjoys the idea of being the mediator, the matchmaker, too much to let it go. “Because it’s a _blind_ date, killjoy.” He stretches the silk scarf taut, wringing it between his hands, adding, “It’d do you good to go along with it, without putting up so much of a fight.”

“I don’t appreciate being threatened in the name of romance,” Soonyoung grumbles as Hyunjoon covers his eyes and ties it around his head. Hyunjoon mimes him when he thinks Soonyoung can’t see, mouthing _blah blah blah_ s over Soonyoung’s words. He gets the tender flesh of his side pinched anyway, because as Hyunjoon said earlier, they are brothers, and Soonyoung has eyes in the back of his head for this.

“When do we tell them that we’ve been together for a while already?”

Soonyoung responds out of the corner of his mouth, eyes shifting around the terraced restaurant, scanning the tables first, then the streets below, the riverside, the adjacent balconies, for familiar faces. He knows they’re nearby, always too close for comfort, a devil and his enabler, one on each of their shoulders, that they’re both desperate to flick off. “After we make a big show out of our “first” kiss being under the lit-up tower or whatever.”

Wonwoo doesn’t like the idea of fulfilling their expectations. He wants to thwart them; if he could have it his way, he’d stage an argument, an it’s-not-you-it’s-me, just to pull the rug out from underneath them. “Why are we acting out the script they’ve given us?”

“Because Hyunjoon called me a killjoy earlier, I’m trying to prove him wrong. And I was planning to kiss you the minute it becomes your birthday anyway.” Soonyoung sounds so resigned, so casual, says it so matter-of-factly, that Wonwoo feels flustered for the first time in a long while, his skin uncomfortably warm and prickly. It goes both ways.

If he could go back in time and tell himself that this was awaiting him in a few years, a do-over, a scratch-out-and-rewrite, a Soonyoung who has grown up to be unafraid of love for a Wonwoo who has grown up to be unafraid of rejection.

He clears his throat and gestures at the menu. “What are you getting?”

Wrist-watches and wall-mounted clocks are unnecessary in a place like this, because come midnight, the terrace is bathed in a shower of light. The oily-black river below them reflects rippling shards of the tower’s glitter, and Soonyoung asks Wonwoo to walk with him along its edge. The kiss, which they have to understate, to pretend is their first rather than their millionth in the past week, tastes good, feels good, as usual, their lips only still and quiet when they’re against each other.

Hyunjoon and Seulgi would like to imagine that loud, blinding fireworks went off when Soonyoung and Wonwoo’s lips touched. They’d like to imagine that a small rented plane flew by trailing a flag that congratulated them for finally getting together. They’d like to blow noisemakers in their faces, return to their playground days for an instant just so they can shout I-told-you-so, throw confetti and flower petals over their heads, serenade them like grooms.

What really happens is they emerge out of the dark behind them, whooping and whistling, Hyunjoon clapping Wonwoo on the back and Seulgi straightening Soonyoung’s askew collar when they reach them.

“That’s a year of my life I’m never getting back!” Hyunjoon exclaims, never one to shy away from exaggerations.

Soonyoung rounds on him. “But now you’ll finally leave us alone?”

Seulgi _pfft_ s at Soonyoung’s vain attempts just as Hyunjoon says, “No way. Not as long as I’m your brother.”

Seulgi beams at both of them, at her brother and Hyunjoon’s. “Well, it took you long enough! What did it? Tell us everything.”

“Not to pat ourselves on the back-” Hyunjoon begins.

“It certainly wasn’t your doings,” Wonwoo interrupts, eyeing Hyunjoon warily. “Anyway, I hate to break it to you, but we’ve been together since Monaco.” Something about the way he says it makes it sound like he doesn’t hate to break it at all; in fact, the smugness in his smile after he drops such a bomb tells them that he loves this upper hand he and Soonyoung have had.

The tower’s sparkling lights are shut off for the night just as Seulgi and Hyunjoon consider such a betrayal, such an unexpected turn of events, proof that they weren’t half as instrumental in bringing them together as they’d thought all along.

“It was fun while it lasted,” Hyunjoon says hollowly, bathed in physical and emotional darkness. “But I see why they say the fun’s in the chase, not the catch.”

Soonyoung laughs at how invested he is, how betrayed by such a simple fact, as though Soonyoung and Wonwoo falling in love wasn’t their end goal, as though it wasn’t fulfilled at all just because he wasn’t the marionettist. Seulgi elbows Hyunjoon gently. “Don’t be such a sour-puss. Let’s go back to the hotel.”

They watch them go. “Happy birthday,” Soonyoung says, turning to face Wonwoo once again. “I…” But he falters, deliberately, not because he’s unable to say it, but because he doesn’t think it really means as much as he feels anymore.

“We’re past the point of I-love-you-s, don’t you think?” Wonwoo responds, feeling Soonyoung’s hand wrap around his waist and rest there, above his hipbone, his grip comfortably tight, the weight of his hand warm. That’s where it belongs, Wonwoo thinks.

Soonyoung nods. “As the French would say, it’s cliché. Passé.” Everything has become tongue-in-cheek, and yet genuine in its insincerity, their love for each other folded into their scorn of all things trite.

Wonwoo laughs. No one else can make him laugh like this, in a way he can’t help, bubbling out of him before he can stop it. It’s stupid, so many things he does are, but he’s Wonwoo’s stupid. Wonwoo closes his eyes and it’s all dark when he kisses him, until fireworks explode on the backs of his eyelids, within him, when their lips touch.

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> wew. that was very short. sorry about that.
> 
> i've always wanted to write a fic from the perspective of outsiders/observers/bystanders looking in at the relationship as opposed to it purely being through the eyes of the two in love. i've also wanted to write wonseul siblings and soonhwall siblings for what feels like centuries now. i had a lot of fun writing this, and i hope it was at least somewhat fun to read???? it's so different from my usual stuff aaaahhhhh
> 
> anyway thanks so much for reading this and PLEASE PLEASE DON'T FORGET TO SUPPORT ALL THE OTHER AUTHORS AND ARTISTS!!!! my dearest friends and all of soonwoonet's best authors have poured so much love and effort into crafting fics much grander (in both plot and word count) than this, so please please give them a lot of feedback and love!!!! thank you cheers hoorah <3


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